Emi Frerichs, Ph.D. (they/them) is the 2023-2025 Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Associate in Transgender Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a specialist of the Global South, Frerichs re-examines trans/travesti/non-binary gender identity and non-normative sexualities by focusing on their radical revision in Latin American literature, history, and culture. While drawing on the cultural and linguistic expertise forged through their field work as a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, their research necessarily draws from as it also contributes to the transdisciplinary work of Latin American Studies, Trans*/Travesti Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.

They are currently working on their first book, Irreverent Revelations: Travesti Aesthetics and Intimacies in Southern Cone Literature and Culture, which examines travesti authorship, artistry, and representation within the literary and cultural production of late 20^th-and 21^st-century Argentina and Chile. Focusing on the counter-formations of Latin American travesti and trans identities articulated by literary and activist interventions into the constraints of el género—gender and genre—Frerichs offers an analysis of how each author and artist not only offers bold renditions of thriving representation that recuperates travesti’s subversive history, but also generates an analysis of the literary and aesthetic modes for decolonizing the conscripts of gender through a politics of refusing translation.  Their future work will amplify these conversations at the intersections of Latin American Studies and Trans/Travesti Studies through a comparative project on the life-writing strategies and narratives of transmasculine identities, activisms, and subjecthood within contemporary Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Frerichs’ writing has appeared in journals such as Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana and Hispanófila and is forthcoming in Transgender Studies Quarterly. Their work will also appear in the edited book volume entitled Rhetorics of Care for the Peeters Publishers Leuven Ethics of Care Series.

As a lifelong activist in the LGBTQ+ community, Frerichs received the Iowa Friends of Civil Rights Award in 2005 and the Matthew Shepard Scholarship from 2006-2010 in recognition of their early advocacy in the queer and trans community. As a transmasculine-identified scholar, instructor, and activist, they extend this enduring commitment to institutional advocacy through their research on Transgender Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, and Latin American Studies, which has been awarded support through UW-Madison Tinker Nave Grant in 2018 and the GLBT Alumni Council of the Wisconsin Alumni Association Research Award in 2019.